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{
    "id": 836500,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/836500/?format=api",
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    "content": "where there is smell of ugali, you walk there and join people in eating a meal and move on. Nobody denies you a meal in our community. That is how we have been brought up and that is how people have grown up. I have visited some homes for friends and supporters and you will find over 90- year old parents living reasonably well. However, we also have eccentric characters in our society today who deny their parents when they get to older age. When you meet somebody with an old person who cannot even walk, they will tell you it is some fellow they picked but it is their father. That is why we need a legislation to bring some form of order. I will be hesitant to my colleague from Kericho to institutionalise homes for looking after older people. I agree with him on what is he calling “home-based care” because the Government has already made a step. I hope they will improve it so that people benefit across board. There are social safety net funds that are supposed to go to the elderly people. I have seen in the villages they register people. Anybody from 65 years is supposed to be registered to receive some monthly stipend to live on. The challenge for the elderly is not food because people can eat from friends and so on. The problem is medicare. Children are very expensive to bring up because of healthcare. Elderly people become as vulnerable as children. So, while healthcare is devolved almost to 95 per cent, the passage of this Bill will create additional financial requirements in the counties. Mr. Speaker, Sir, this House must also look back and see how we will encourage cooperation and collaboration between the national Government and county governments. The national Government still holds on to about 90 per cent of the budget for health when, in fact, they are responsible for five per cent of the health sector. With cooperation and collaboration, nurses can be employed in the villages, not necessarily to work in hospitals, but be attached to some health centre or hospital. They will then be assigned to attend to elderly people in homes, where they will do routine visits, to examine them, check on their health and nutrition and see that they are living well. Sometimes the Government comes up with a very good idea and then implements it so clumsily that it ends up losing meaning. Everybody in this country is now crazy about Information Technology (IT). You get an illiterate old man in the village, who has never held a phone, and say that you will be disbursing all safety-net funds through M- pesa. How will such an old man get the M-pesa? What then happens? Children of their neighbours or their own sons or grandsons give their numbers, and when the money comes, it ends up in phones that do not belong to these elders and disappears. So, we need to have a better way of managing how social safety-net funds reach old people. If that is programmed properly, it solves half of the problems that Sen. Cheruiyot is addressing here. This is because we want people to be given some form of shelter. Where I come from – and I want to encourage all of us – you cannot leave your parent in squalor, when you live decently in your house. When people get old, they need people to look after them. We must take this responsibility. Mr. Speaker, Sir, the third issue is the obligation that we are trying to put on county governments in terms of how to meet the demands of elderly people. Sen. The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}